Others say...

"Especially helpful with initial set up"
I'm an experienced bookkeeper but I still found this book extremely useful. Read this book BEFORE you set up your company - she has good suggestions on entering historical information and other topics. Well written and clear. I would have liked to have more examples, however.

"Easy to follow"
I bought this book to brush up on my QuickBooks skills in the hope to enhance my resume. The book is easy to understand and begins you with starting your business on QuickBooks and walks you through every step you need to get everything on the books and squared away. I can see where there might be some problems if you begin a job that has QuickBooks and you are required to learn it, but I think with some patience and this book anyone with a brain would be able to pick up on it quick.

"The Practical Side of Quickbooks"
Intuit products, such as Quickbooks, have excellent pull-down Help, among the best written in the software industry. Information is well indexed and clearly written with step-by-step instructions. Quickbooks also has an excellent set of video tutorials, which take about 90 minutes if you view all of them (which I recommend).

But what the Help and the video tutorials can't really do is give you advice on how to use the accounting system works in practice. How do the individual parts fit into the big picture and what are your choices, depending upon your business, for handling things like Vendor Bills, Customer Sales Receipts, petty cash, etc.? Why would you want to choose one method over another?

This is where this book comes in. Ivens answers the very practical questions that everyone has starting out. For example, should I log deposits against customer sales, or should I treat deposits as a lump sum? Why would I want choose one method over the other? This book answers this, and many other practical questions, clearly, with step-by-step instructions for each method and the rationale behind it.

I would highly recommend this book to supplement the pull-down Help and the video tutorials to answer the many practical decision that you will have to make about how to set up your system so that it will work best for you.


"QuickBooks 2007"
QuickBooks is well designed for use by the financial manager of a small business. This "Official Guide" for the 2007 edition is well written and well organized.

"QuickBooks 2007 The Official Guide"
I am only doing the basic functions with Quickbooks including automatic downloads from my bank. I have not used this book at all and frankly have trouble finding what I need. I feel the small guide that comes with the software and the online tuorials and 30 day free 24/7 support is adequate.